Negotiations and Love Songs

This is #Blogmas, and welcome to a month’s worth of posts which are supposed to act as a shop window for the site and my content. All the images you’ll see this month are pulled, in roughly historical order, from the archives of various websites, pages and social media forum in which I have existed, since the Internet was downloaded on a modem and all you had was text.

In the main these were either made for me, or I did it myself, and looking at my archives there appears to be quite a lot of them.

Let’s begin therefore with a quick overview.

And You Are?

I have an actual biography page. It has existed for as long as my personal site has been here, which (according to the files) is October 6th, 2011. My Warcraft site came into being on February 2nd, 2009 which means, as of next month, it will be almost a decade since I started blogging. It’s like a completely different world between there and now.

What am I saying, it IS a completely different world, and if anyone tried to write this as fiction, nobody would believe it.

What Do You Do?

I love to make graphics, and did that for nearly two decades, with lots of other stuff, often in an attempt to impress people who really didn’t really care that much at the results. I’ve been in and out of numerous fandoms. My daughter worries that she’s got no consistency in that regard, but considering my track record… it’s clearly genetic.

I’ve treated a lot of people really poorly too, but in my defence only now is it clear why that happened, and I’m really sorry. No, genuinely it’s the truth, but I’m not off to offer any olive branches any time soon. The past, for everybody’s mental health, needs to stay exactly where it was left.

What I wanted to do more than graphics however was to write. It just needed a while to remember how that happened well. It has taken about 18 years more or less; now we’ve arrived at the point where, with some confidence, there is progress.

Deep Thought

The process of redemptive blogging really began thanks to World of Warcraft. There were blogs before (and a LiveJournal account I still get the odd acknowledgement from) plus a Facebook page which was sensibly closed well before all the real drama began.

I’ve adopted various pseudonyms and now, in the last week, was my my real name attached back to this website. I only do this with the knowledge both mind and body is ready for whatever the consequences of such actions will be.

That’s taken a phenomenal amount of work. I suffered from depression, anxiety and self esteem issues for decades. We’ve reduced that to just anxiety now, and to maintain it that way is a priority. Understanding why all this happened has been a tough ask, but now I am in control of my own destiny.

Most of the toxic elements in my life have been purged. This is the best it has ever been. This is the happiest I’ve ever felt.

The Grand Plan

Yes, I want to get my work published. No, I’m not expecting miracles. Yes, hard work is its own reward. No, you don’t get anything unless it is worked for. This website is part of a plan to produce content, on my terms. At the same time, I’m entering contests and looking to generate pieces that others will think good enough to reproduce.

There’s at least one epic Science Fiction novel in me, but more and more there’s the pull of something far more personal. What that means going forward is anybody’s guess. I pulled out of NaNoWriMo this year: there’s too much left unfinished. That’s getting fixed starting today.

Lots of things get fixed starting now.

So, this is the starting point. Tomorrow, we’ll deal in some specifics.